Occupy Seattle Goes on Tour

The Occupy Seattle encampment at Seattle Central Community College may be a bit quieter than usual today; many participants in the movement were up bright and early at 7am, boarding buses bound for Olympia to make their voices heard on the first day of the new legislative session. With the State once again facing a daunting budget deficit, the Occupiers are hoping to convince legislators to close the gap with taxes on the wealthy rather than further cuts to education and services. Occupy the Capitol, a group encompassing local Occupations around Washington, has planned a full day of events at and around the Capitol, including rallies, music, and marches, culminating in a candlelight vigil, and of course, some quasi-legal camping.

Much has been made over the Occupation's supposed lack of mission (which supporters would argue is a feature rather than a failing). It's extremely unlikely we'll ever get anything as neat and simple as a bullet-point list of proposals from the movement, but Occupy the Capitol has drawn up a list of proposed cuts they oppose, which can at least tell us what they're against:

• 13,000 legal immigrants would be cut from the state's food assistance program—their only source of food aid because they are ineligible for federal food assistance.
• 35,000 people would be kicked off the Basic Health Plan, ending a program that subsidizes health care for poor.
• 21,000 people enrolled in the state's Disability Lifeline and ADATSA (Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Treatment Support Act) programs would have their medical services cut off.
• Two wards at Western State Hospital would be closed eliminating some much needed inpatient psychiatric hospital services for the poor.
• Foster care, juvenile rehabilitation and substance abuse treatment programs would be slashed by $118 million.
• $150 million would be cut from funding school districts with a poor property tax base which will dramatically increase class sizes in affected districts and could shorten the school year.
• State colleges and universities will lose another $225 million.
• Funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs will drop by $240,000.
• The nuclear waste site cleanup program at Hanford—the most contaminated nuclear site in the nation—will lose $581,000.

This move comes on top of $10 billion in state budget cuts over the last three years, which have resulted in furloughs and layoffs for state employees, a 47 percent increase in tuition at public universities, the gutting of social and health services, and many other attacks on the basic quality of life for the 99 percent of Washington.

Rather than cuts, the Occupiers argue for "revenue increases," which inevitably come in the form of either tax hikes or closing loopholes. The perception among Occupy activists is that average Washingtonians have sacrificed in the name of deficit reduction, but the wealthy elite have not shared the burden. With our steep taxes on sales and complete lack of taxation on income, Washington's tax structure is one of the nation's most regressive, but voters have consistently rejected reforms. The most recent effort was the so-called "millionaires' tax," which would have introduced an income tax on the State's wealthiest 1%, but was voted down in 2010. However, last year's painful, all-cuts budget may have Washingtonians giving new revenue streams like the income tax a second look.

Nationally, the Occupations have had a great deal of success in changing the political conversation- it was only a few months ago that debate in the halls of Congress was limited to haggling over which particular programs would be cut in the name of deficit reduction. In the coming weeks, we'll find out if the movement has enough momentum locally to have the same effect on state politics.